Exploring the frontiers of gay consciousness with Don Kilhefner

Gay elders! Gay elders! Where are you? Part II

When I lived in Ethiopia in my early 20s, the young men in the village would add years to their age because they wanted to be seen as older than they actually were. They were attracted to aging, to becoming old, because it was a great honor for them to assume the role of a village adult or elder. It’s just the opposite of what we find in the gay community with its “60 is the new 50” nonsense. Beloved brothers: With all the nips and tucks, megavitamins, hormone replacement therapy, dying eyelashes and so forth, 60 is still the same old 60 and you will soon be 65 then 70 then 80, and somewhere along this road you will die. It’s the way life works. In any case, by the time you reach 60 it’s really time for your inner beauty to begin shining forth in all its glory. I bet you all the Botox and steroids in West Hollywood that your inner beauty is still there. It just needs to be coaxed out and put to good use in the service of others. Otherwise, if you can afford it, at age 70 you end up with waxy, stretched-smooth skin, and pretentious behavior—looking and acting like Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Traditionally, becoming an elder is connected with becoming old. Several years ago I attended a week-long intergenerational gathering of men in the coastal redwood forest of Mendocino County. A young man in his late 20s challenged Malidoma Some, an initiated elder and shaman among the Dagara people of West Africa, by asking: “How come you can be an elder and I cannot?” Great question! I’ll never forget Malidoma’s calm reply: “Because I have suffered longer than you.” An elder is usually tempered by life and it will show.

While chronological age is one factor involved in becoming a gay tribal elder, traditionally becoming an elder also has been connected to what you do in the village. Becoming a gay elder is largely a doing-state, not just a being-state. When I was 23 and living in Ethiopia I started, with the assistance of other teachers and important people in the village, a free lunch program for poor students in the school in which I taught. Soon thereafter, the shemagaleoch (“elders” in Amharic) in the village would greet me with the honorific title shemagale (“elder”), even though I was only in my early 20s. At first my 20-something brain thought they were making fun of me, but an Ethiopian mentor explained that they were calling me an elder because I was doing one of the traditional roles of an elder in the village—making sure the young were being fed. They were blessing me. Likewise, one of the roles of the gay elder is making sure our youth are being taken care of—fed physically, intellectually, and spiritually.

Will you become a gay older or a gay elder? In our community, today, gay men generally become olders rather than elders. Gay olders keep having birthdays year after year but often relate to aging and becoming old with avoidance or fear: fear of losing their power, fear of financial insecurity, and fear of the Invisible World—the great unknown. They might grow from a youth into an adult holding down a responsible job, but in their 50s and 60s, gay olders often fail to grasp that there is a critical necessity to continue growing into a new social role—gay elder. Unlike heterosexuals who many times naturally, and with many role models, grow into a grandfather role in their biocentric families, gay olders generally make themselves less and less visible in the community and largely stop contributing in any way if, indeed, they ever contributed to building and sustaining a gay community. Gay olders have virtually no contact with gay youth—age apartheid—and forget they have non-biological gay grandchildren to tend to. Let me hasten to add that both gay olders and elders are worthy of being treated with respect and courtesy as is the custom around the world.

Gay tribal elders, on the other hand, keep growing into new and empowering roles within the community. For example, in my youth I was a gay liberation warrior, in my adult stage a gay community organizer, and now as a gay elder, talking with you through this Edging Out column among other meaningful activities in the village appropriate to my age. Gay elders are visible in the community working constructively in many different ways, supporting and encouraging gay adults and youth—not afraid to get their hands dirty. Fear fades as life becomes more and more purposeful, personal aliveness becomes stronger, and a real and deeper understanding of the continuity of life emerges. I will talk more about the specific roles gay elders play in the community in my next column. For you bottom-line queers, let me suggest why I think it is important to start walking the path of the gay elder rather than the gay older. The bottom-line is not how much real estate you have acquired, the size of your Palm Springs pool, the age of your boyfriend, or the elimination of the bags under your eyes. At the end of the road, the bottom-line for you as a gay man will be are you having a meaningful death or a meaningless death? The answer to that question is largely based on—did you lead a purposeful life based on your gifts and contributing to the greater good or a largely purposeless life based on consuming and following the herd? At present, corporate-controlled, youth-obsessed, ego-led, consumption-driven, money-worshiping American society at large is designed to produce meaningless deaths.

In closing this column it is very important to remember that the Los Angeles gay community is only 38 years old—that’s all. Before 1970 there was no community and by gay community I mean gay people visibly and collectively assuming responsibility for each other. Mine is the first generation of older gay men who can consciously claim the role of gay tribal elder in the village. There are more questions than answers in this regard. But the future of our community depends on gay men emerging who, with awareness, assume an eldering role in the community; and gay adults who likewise assume a mentoring role to our youth. Elder and storyteller Michael Meade made a powerful and astute observation when he said:

“Given half a chance, the youth will take their steps and trust the river of life. The bigger questions may be whether a village can be created that can truly accept and receive them. Those who wish to work as mentors and elders have to keep one eye on the youth—and another on conditions in the village.”

Don Kilhefner, Ph.D., is co-facilitator of the “Gay Men and the Midlife Awakening” workshop, a Jungian psychologist, and pioneering gay activist in West Hollywood. He can be reached at: donkilhefner@sbcglobal.net.